Democracy Story Labs
We have been gathering journalists, broadcasters, social scientists, technologists, academics and storytellers together in a series of Democracy Story Labs; to share analysis of the state of public opinion on democracy in each of our regions, to examine the relationship between the condition of our information ecosystem and levels of civic engagement, and to build coalitions of public interest media allies working to build a healthy information ecosystem for all.
How we think about information ecosystems in the 21st century will be decisive in terms of the outcomes that we see, not just on climate, but on every social issue around immigration, around human rights, women's rights, around identity. All of these issues are shaped by society's ability to have a conversation. That space is where society thinks, and if it is completely polluted ..and driven towards the extremes, society becomes incapable of collective thought. And incapable of collective outcomes at a time when we need them more than we ever have.
Tom Brookes
Global Strategic Communications Council
In spite of its massive economic and cultural power, the film and television industry doesn’t often question its role in the bigger information ecosystem or how it might be different. Instead we tend to fixate on what the markets are signalling or the prevailing political winds in a given territory. It’s time to change that frame.
In 2023 + 2024 we hosted the first Democracy Story Labs in London and Rio, co-designed with our colleagues at Peri Productions. We gathered organisations working in 40+ countries, who are engaged with thousands of creatives working in film and television, in radio and podcasts. These organisations are experts in the making and distributing of media in very different contexts, including within authoritarian regimes.
We invited close cousins working in academia, journalism, strategic comms, human rights and civil liberties, data and digital rights and the law. We do not typically have these kinds of conversations together, but the labs were a moment to ask if and how we might collaborate in the future, as part of a much broader and more powerful public interest coalition.
We punctuated theoretical debate and structural conversations with project shares from teams of filmmakers from around the world who are mid-production with narratives about the joys and the struggles in people’s lives, stories which connect the personal to the political. Reminding us of the potential reach and powerful transformation of great storytelling.
You’d be welcome to download our reflections and learnings from the first two labs, including field analysis and recommendations for how, as a community, we think about building a better future for independent media.
Our priority in 2025 is to convene a powerful flotilla of colleagues working in film + television, in journalism, in social media and strategic comms, for narrative hacks in Europe and the USA, examining democracy’s challenges and independent media’s response in both of these contexts.
Email us at democracy@docsociety.org to get involved and sign up to our newsletter for these and future events in your region.
Queer Now is designed to answer two questions: Where are we at in the current moment of LGBTQIA+ backlash, regionally and globally, and what can filmmakers do to shift this narrative? How can we build solidarity between advocates, academics, NGOs, storytellers, and more to harness narrative strategy to protect queer communities, preserve LGBTQIA+ rights, and build more liberated queer futures?
Following Doc Society’s Queer Impact Producer Lab in New York and the Queer Now Lab in partnership with CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, we are now hosting a third edition in South Africa in 2024. Partnering with the largest gathering of LGBTQIA+ changemakers globally, ILGA World, to build international networks and support global majority storytellers, movement leaders and those on the frontlines from the African continent. To get involved email democracy@docsociety.org
Disinformation is a major threat to our societies, undermining trust in the public institutions and the media. This year we will see a rapid escalation as generative AI is deployed by campaigners and bad actors to target netizens in novel, dangerous and potentially harmful ways. The scale, sophistication, and affordability of this technology is unprecedented.
We are all ill equipped to deal with an information crisis of this magnitude.
The Big Tech Narrative Initiative is a multi-pronged initiative that seeks to harness the power of narrative storytelling working in community, building a cohort of projects tackling issue areas connected to Big Tech, mis/disniformation, AI, and our information ecosystems. Together we are asking: what are the stories needed now to explore and unpack the role Big Tech has in our societies?
This narrative intervention will consist of three initiatives; a global mapping project to learn about the stories being developed, an online briefing for a wide group of storytellers, and an in-person lab in 2025.
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